Humanities Campus Visits - Snapshots from Timberline Elementary

Today, I had the pleasure of spending the day with the Timberline Tigers. This special group of teachers and students made quite an impression on us as we were greeted professionally by 1-2 students in each and every classroom with a handshake and an explanation of what we'd be seeing them working on during our stay. There was an earnestness to their work and clear purpose to classroom activities that was great to experience.

As I toured TES, I saw teachers implementing our new curriculum and working to transition to the instructional framework it expects. Perhaps the most prevalent thing we noticed was the amount of writing students were doing. We saw writing workshop examples from kindergarten through the upper grades (along with a great guided writing lesson taking place with a kindergarten small group) and writing in every subject area. The amount of writing and the focus on the "skills to secure" expectations were consistent with our curriculum along with the multiple examples of Thinking Maps which hung on many walls. It seemed clear that teachers were using the Maps in all subject areas as ways to help train students to organize their thinking. I also loved seeing the parallels between English and Spanish instruction - it kept me on my toes trying to translate between the two types of anchor charts! :)

We overheard some sophisticated discussions of social studies (branches of government, types of elected officials) and saw many examples of recently completed Cornerstone Tasks. There were some word walls that were clearly getting lots of use as evidenced by words that we could tell were being added weekly along with different units and items being discussed. I also loved seeing the reflective frames that were common across many classrooms such as "Today I learned_____. ______ was fun or interesting because______. _______was difficult because_______. I used to think_____, but now I think_______.

As with some of our other campuses with a particular focus or theme, Timberline has demonstrated how their Leader in Me work can weave together many of the aspects of LEAD 2021 that GCISD has been implementing.  They share a common language around the 7 Habits and their students are clearly coming to understand much about leadership.  

Click here to see a few examples of some of the great things we saw at Timberline today!

Humanities Campus Visits - Snapshots from Dove Elementary

My most recent Humanities classroom visits took place this week at Dove Elementary. I was especially curious to see how Dove was implementing the new K-5 curriculum in light of their efforts to become an International Baccalaureate (IB) school. I knew that some very special things had been taking place at DES of late, but I was not sure how their teachers were going to be able to weave IB into our new ELA/SS curriculum model. Wow! They blew me away. It was amazing to see how seamlessly they are weaving the pieces together. This happens through TONS of collaboration and support by their leadership as well as determination on the part of teachers. Kudos!

During my visit, I got to see a brilliant example of how a new 3rd grade Humanities unit was introduced through "unpacking." This is the same language/process for unit introduction we use in grades 6-12, so these kiddos will be way ahead of the curve! I saw beautiful examples of self-contained 5th grade instruction with students working very intently in R/W workshop, meeting with teachers in small groups or 1:1, and owning their independent learning. I saw upper grade teachers taking running records with students and using this to help find "just right" texts, and I saw several classrooms in which students were engaged in the act of reading self-selected books. I got to experience the 2nd grade student presentations of the historic Grapevine landmarks they'd researched, and I learned many things about my new neighborhood (we just moved to downtown Grapevine last month!). Students took pride in their work, had done lots of research, had worked to edit their writing, and could speak articulately about their learning. I saw several examples of good word work - Words Their Way in action, interactive word walls, handwriting practice, and individual spelling dictionaries. And while I didn't get to spend lots of time in K-1 while kids were present, I did see some great classroom artifacts that showed me that workshop, technology, and cornerstone tasks are vibrant parts of the work they are doing.

Perhaps one of the most affirming aspects of these campus visits has been the way schools with such a wide variety of "personalities" are using the structure of our newly designed curriculum, adapting it to their contexts, and staying true to the key sequence and instructional elements. This was the vision of our curriculum steering committee last year, and it's a huge celebration that this vision is bearing fruit.  Our students are now being educated in a more cohesive system of curriculum sequences and instructional frameworks, and as years go by, the cumulative benefits of this will pay dividends!

For a peek into a few of the classrooms I got to see at Dove last week, click here. Also see this awesome video they shared with me about a recent IB unit they completed. So cool! Enjoy!